Foreign Minister Taro Kono expressed hope Wednesday that Tokyo and Seoul can work to improve bilateral relations that have cooled following court rulings in South Korea on wartime labor.
Tokyo is waiting to see how Seoul will respond to the recent rulings ordering Japanese companies to pay compensation over forced labor, Kono said, as Japan believes the decisions undermine the legal basis of bilateral ties.
Although bilateral relations are "facing very difficult issues, we hope to overcome them," Kono said at a news conference in Tokyo.